Actor Russell Hornsby opens up his role in ‘The Hate U Give’

Tuesday

When he first rehearsed the opening scene of the film “The Hate U Give,” actor Russell Hornsby identified with his character so much that he momentarily had to leave the set.

“Being a black man in America, I know what these kids have in front of them,” said Hornsby, who stars as Maverick Carter, a father and store owner who has left behind his gang and prison years to become a model in his African-American community. “I have two young sons and the emotion came from knowing that I will have to give them this talk one day and that fundamentally distressed me. I had to literally go away and let it out; to give myself time to cry.”

During the “talk” around the dinner table, Mav tells his daughter, Starr, then 9, and two sons to “Keep your hands out of your pocket. You can bet you’re going to be pulled over.” Starr remembers that advice seven years later when police stop her friend, Khalil, for failing to signal a turn, and though she warns desperately, Khalil reaches for his hairbrush and the cop, mistaking it for a gun, kills him.

It’s a tragically predictable outcome anticipated from the film’s start, but the storytelling nonetheless is powerful, believable and thought provoking. Told from Starr’s viewpoint, it’s a coming-of-age tale set against the reality of racial stereotypes and fears that affect everyone. That’s summed up in the acronym coined by the late rapper and activist Tupac Shakur that runs as a refrain through the film: “THUG LIFE: The hate you give little infants f---- everyone.”

The film, which opens Oct. 19, is based on the book “The Hate U Give, “ a New York Times best seller by Angie Thomas, who, like Starr, grew up straddling two worlds: Her urban black neighborhood and her largely white private suburban high school. Unlike Starr, Thomas was not the sole witness to a murder, but a similar police shooting of Oscar Grant in Oakland, California in 2009 inspired her to write the story.

As Mav, Hornsby, along with his wife, Lisa, played by Regina Hall, support Starr as she struggles with the decision whether to testify about the murder, a quandary that reflects her divided identity. In her own community of Garden Heights, Starr is “Version One,” where she has black friends and enjoys hip-hop music, but is sometimes accused of acting “white.” At her private school Williamson, she is “Version Two,” where she enjoys the academics and her white girlfriends and boyfriend, but is constantly on her guard not to appear too “hood.”

Coping with her grief and anger over Khalil’s death, Starr also must face her fears about telling the truth to a grand jury. If she does so, she worries that she will both lose her acceptance at Williamson and that she will put herself and her family in danger in Garden Heights because her testimony could implicate King, the drug lord for whom Khalil reluctantly worked to earn money to care for his ill grandmother and for whom Maverick also once sold drugs.

Mav and Lisa differ on what they believe Starr should do, yet they are respectful of each other and of their daughter, whose name they chose hoping she would “light up the darkness” of the world. Starr, played by Amandla Stenberg who starred in “The Hunger Games,” eventually learns how not to be Version One or Version Two, but just herself.

“They feel they have raised their daughter in a way for her to make the right decision,” Hornsby said. “Mav feels you want to be able to say you lived for something, you died for something, that as a black person you could be taken out at any moment so make your life count and have the courage of your convictions. But Lisa feels that everything is going so well, why do you want to mess it up? That’s the complexity of it.”

During an interview last week at the Eliot Hotel in Boston, Hornsby, who trained just down the street in theater at Boston University, said he wanted to play Maverick because of the depth of the character.

“I’m theater guy,” said Hornsby, who starred in the films “Fences,” “Creed 2” and “Seven Seconds,” among other films, television series and plays. “I look at script and think about how deep can I go? Mav is a black man who made mistakes, reformed, and came back to his family to love his wife and kids, become an entrepreneur and respected in his community. He has a second chance and makes his life better and shows integrity and strength.”

And yet, Mav takes risks when King, the drug lord, threatens and then attacks his family.

“Rightly or wrongly, I can’t walk away. I live in this community and I know within my soul that I have to maintain my integrity as a man and protect my family,” Hornsby said. “It’s that street code of conduct.”

In the Oakland neighborhood where Hornsby grew up and his Catholic boys’ high school, Hornsby lived and studied in racially diverse communities. His single-parent mother never gave him “the talk,” but instilled in him a sense of black pride, personal responsibility, and an awareness that he would face harsher consequences than white kids if he messed up.

Hornsby learned another important lesson from a black high school religion teacher that he believes is also conveyed by “The Hate U Give.”

“In the 90s, we wore T-shirts that said, ‘It’s a black thing. You wouldn’t understand.’ He told us, “Gentlemen, I want you to understand, it’s NOT a black thing you wouldn’t understand, but it’s a black thing, let me help you understand.”

Through Mav and his family, Hornsby said the film shows a truth, whose acknowledgement is the first step toward bridging this country’s racial tensions.

“In this black family, we get to the universal through the specific,” he said. “Look at who we are and the dynamics surrounding us. You have to first see and feel empathy for what we go through so you can not blame, but say, ‘Wow, I get that.’ It’s by recognizing that we do have a racial divide and that black people are being targeted and mistreated, and then having a dialogue.”In its exploration of racism, the film is insightful, Hornsby said. Mav’s cousin, Carlos, is a police officer, played by Common, who admits to Starr that he thinks about drugs and weapons every time he stops a black driver and that he would not shoot a white man who reached into his car to pick something up. It’s a reflection of one of the film’s memorable lines: “Our blackness is the weapon they fear.”

“Racism is just not a color thing, it’s a state of mind,” Hornsby said. “You put on that blue uniform and your mentality is that now you’re a man of the state. If the state says black men are threats, you think it’s your job to keep them down.”

That fear hurts whites and blacks. At a family dinner in a restaurant, Mav and Lisa lightly kiss and they laugh affectionately when their young son says, “You’re going to scar me for life.” But the real scar is when the boy breaks into tears as he sees the violence of both the police and the drug lord. The message is clear — choose love over hate.— Jody Feinberg may be reached at jfeinberg@patriotledger.com or follow her on Twitter @JodyF_Ledger.

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